In today?s hectic world, we often feel like we?re busy all of the time. It?s true that we tend to have a million things going on at once a lot of the time but you?d be surprised to find out how much downtime you and the rest of the people in your company actually have. You wait in lines for lattes and you sit in conference rooms hoping that your business meeting will just hurry up and start soon. During these times, you could be making use of your mobile phone to increase your productivity. And by taking care of tasks through your phone during these downtimes, your actual hours off of work will be far more relaxed.
Of course, you aren?t going to want to hop on your phone and make a call to the office every time that you have a moment to spare. We all know how annoying it is when the person in front of you in the coffee line is too busy chatting away to get their order completed so that you can get your caffeine and move on. But there are plenty of other things that you can do with your phone that will let you maximize these wait times without irritating everyone around you.
Text messaging is one of the most common productive ways of using this time. Make sure that your text messages are actually purposeful. You don?t really need to send a ?hello? and ?how are things?? to the secretary. But if you want to make sure that a specific report is on your desk when you get back to the office so that you don?t have to spend time looking for it, a quick text message to the admin?s cell phone could be in order. Likewise, if you just need some quick numbers sent your way, a text sent while waiting at a red light requesting that those numbers be texted back is an efficient way of getting that information.
Text messaging may be the most widely used mobile downtime service but there are many other things that you can do with your cell phone that can speed up your day. Shopping is one of the online applications which is relatively new and which is often overlooked by business phone users. There are a number of different mobile applications which can be used with different phones, allowing you to place orders for everything from candy baskets to office supplies directly from your phone. BlackBerry users can look into Digby and Sprint Nextel users will want to look at Mobile Shopper. Both of these are free download shopping programs. When you?re standing in line at the bank and realize that it?s your boss?s birthday and nobody ordered the cake, you can push a few buttons on the cell phone and take care of business.
Many professionals have avoided looking into the new programs that are available for their cell phones because they don?t want to add more activities to their already busy days. However, finding new ways to make use of your mobile applications during downtime can significantly increase the day?s productivity. And of course mobile VoIP is going to only facilitate this productivity as it becomes a more widespread option. This will take a lot off of your plate and allow you to use your working hours for work so that your mind can rest easy when the business day is done.
In the world of business, it?s always important to stay one step ahead of the competition. That one step is what makes the difference between deals being sealed and deals falling through. VoIP isn?t going to be a be-all and end-all means of getting yourself up over that ledge of competitive fervor, but it could be one of the tools that you use to haul yourself up there. VoIP can decrease costs and increase productivity which may give you the edge that you need to get your business to where it?s at the top of its game.
The bottom line is that the bottom line matters. VoIP decreases costs in a number of different ways. It decreases the overall cost of making long distance phone calls which saves your company money outright on a monthly basis. VoIP can also decrease administrative costs. One main method of this is that VoIP connects your different branch locations so that all administrative phone calls can easily be channeled through one location, eliminating the need for administrative staff at each separate branch. Additionally, VoIP increases productivity which also helps to cut costs.
Increased productivity is another main reason that VoIP has the potential to give your business a competitive edge. VoIP channels all of your media through one internet location and facilitates remote collaboration. This speeds up the productivity for everyone in the company. And of course, when a business?s employees are more productive, that business stands a better chance of standing out against the competition.
It?s important that you take a look at the need for VoIP, the features it offers and the way that your business will implement those features. There are some companies that find that they don?t need to make the transition to VoIP to keep their calling costs down and their productivity up. But if these are benefits that VoIP can give to you, it makes sense to implement them. Any little step that you can take towards beating out the competition is a step that you can?t afford not to make.
When you travel internationally for business, do you have to worry about how you?re going to make phone calls back to the office? Maybe your business uses prepaid phone cards to keep costs down, which is great for the bottom line but frustrating if you have to call the office several times a day and dial all of those numbers each time. If you?ve got a BlackBerry, you might want to think about using MiNO Wireless instead.
MiNO Wireless is a VoIP-based mobile calling system which allows companies to keep their international calling costs low, especially if BlackBerry is the standard device already used by the company. MiNO can be used by travelers in other countries who are calling back to the company as well as by the company for making calls to employees and customers in international locations. MiNO advertises that they offer ?standard corporate pooling rates to both fixed line AND mobile phones overseas as low as 5.67% cents per minute? when calling from the U.S., a rate which is highly competitive with other VoIP plans. These pooling plans are great for businesses because they allow all employees to pool their minutes into a bulk shared cost. Of course, like with all VoIP, MiNO?s rates vary depending on where you?re calling.
MiNO Wireless is making headlines due in large part to the fact that they were able to impress judges recently at the InformationWeek 500 Conference where they beat out all other competitors presenting in the Startup City session. In addition to their pooling plans, some of the benefits that they offer to businesses include unlimited users at no additional cost with easy account management tools, waived set-up fees, and training sessions so that all employees know how to use the system.
If your business is using VoIP, you need to stay on top of the news about VoIP security issues. Maybe that means you should think about signing up for the RSS feeds from Sipera?a VIPER labs. Sipera is a company that assesses threats to VoIP security in hardware and software. They do daily VoIP vulnerabilities research at their VIPER lab and provide updated announcements about potential security threats. Their three-part system includes vulnerability analysis, risk assessment and penetration testing. Not only do they scan equipment, but they also check blogs and websites for these vulnerabilities and announce any recent attacks that they find online so that other businesses aren?t affected. They have RSS feeds to the announcement of these vulnerabilities as well as to their own regularly updated blog.
Last week, SIPphone launched Gizmo for Mobile (aka Gizmo5), a free software program that combines VoIP services, instant messaging and file transfer features for mobile phone users. The program is appealing to businesses because it works on all major cell phones and PC operating systems (including standard business cell phones like BlackBerry and Treo). And of course, the price is right.
To get started, you?ll need to go to the Gizmo5 website and download the product on to your computer. Add in the contacts that you call most often (starting with the people in your own office). Pay attention to the details behind the ?free? calls; you?ll need to maintain a certain amount of activity to keep the calls no-cost. If you?re using this as a business tool, you shouldn?t have any problems meeting the requirements.
Once you have the software, you can use it to for a number of different services. It works with all major IM programs allowing you to exchange short chat information with co-workers from your phone. It also allows for multi-media file transfers so that you can get the documents and images that you need sent to you when you?re out of the office. And finally it works as a VoIP calling tool, allowing for free or low-cost calls through your computer when you are at the office. This is a free calling program similar to others available online (such as Jajah or iCall) but it?s got the added mobile benefits that those don?t. Pay attention to the mobile phone rates for the service as they may be higher than simply using your cell phone minutes.
If you aren?t quite sure if Gizmo5 makes sense for your business, check out their forums to get some additional information.
One of the major reasons that VoIP is increasingly popular with businesses is that it gives employees the flexibility of working from home or other remote locations. A recent study by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) revealed that the number of employees who work from home but link back to their offices has gone up from 10% to nearly 50% in the last four years. While this number doesn?t necessarily apply to changes here in the U.S., it does reflect the growing trend towards increased home-based work. VoIP with Hosted PBX is cited as one of the main tools helping this trend to work.
Society is moving away from the need to work in a specific location. During the industrialization era and before, employees had to be physically present at the specific location of their jobs to get their work done. Today, so much work is done virtually that this simply isn?t the case. However, it is necessary for employees to be able to work from the same office even when they are physically located in other areas. Everything needs to be streamlined through one virtual location, now more than ever before, in order to make sure that everyone who needs to can access the company information they need to get their work done.
VoIP with hosted PBX facilitates this process. It reduces the costs of calling from nearly any location which makes it financially feasible for companies to allow their employees to work from home. VoIP also allows administrative and secretarial staff to be located separately from employees; so you can work from home and not miss your messages when you head out. As remote collaboration becomes an increasingly standard part of everyday business, VoIP and those technologies spawned from it are only likely to grow in popularity.
In addition to VoIP and the basic laptop, what other tools does your business use to make working from home an option for employees?
There are a number of reasons for concern when considering VoIP for your small business. In the past year, the folding of SunRocket and similar issues throughout the VoIP industry have made businesses second guess whether going for VoIP is a good idea yet. They are concerned that the staying power of VoIP companies just isn?t established enough yet to make the investment that VoIP requires. And you should be concerned about the issue as well, whether you already have VoIP for your business or are considering making the switch from your current phone system to VoIP.
But the issue for businesses is not just that VoIP could have problems; it?s that there are many benefits to think about with VoIP as well. If it was all bad, it would be easy to determine that it?s not beneficial to make the switch. But instead, businesses must look carefully at the pros and cons, the ways in which these affect the business and what the future might hold for them and their VoIP service. These factors all must be balanced with the changing information continually coming out of this growing market.
Robert Poe from VoIP News recently looked at some of these issues. He points out that the issues for businesses are significantly different from those of residential VoIP customers. For example, in the case of an emergency outage, residential customers have concerns that they won?t be able to contact 911. In comparison, major outages that require temporary or permanent relocation might be easier to handle by business that have VoIP calling capabilities. And Poe points out that once you get used to the benefits of VoIP, you might not be able to imagine running your business efficiently any other way. So the choice isn?t an easy one, but it?s increasingly looking like VoIP is one significant contender in the business race.
Are you thinking about implementing VoIP for your small business but having trouble figuring out the ins and outs of the actual implementation? Perhaps you need to go to VoIP Boot Camp. No, there won?t be any crew cut counselors screaming at you about the hosted or non-hosted system that you might need. But you will go through some basic exercises so that you can come out of the camp with the skills that you need to make VoIP work for your business.
VoIP Boot Camp is a service offered by VoIP Strategy.com. Head to the website when you have time to work through the tutorials that are offered there. By working through the different steps of developing a VoIP business strategy, you?ll emerge in top shape for using the technology. The company is offering a free competitive analysis by a professional business telecommunications technician for all businesses who are interested in VoIP. The analysis is designed to help your business become more efficient in its use of VoIP. Can boot camp help your business? Yes Sir!!
